Wild Ones

I'm not going to lie, it's not nearly as enjoyable to write a race recap when you're not very happy about the race. Hence my slacking in getting this up sooner.

Saturday was the season opening 1500m at Sun Angel. I knew the times we were aiming to run were a little ambitious, especially for the first one of the season. But, you have to get after it at some point, so why not right away... We had Geoff Harris to rabbit us and he did a nice job hitting splits. Unfortunately, I ended up falling in behind him. It's not the position I wanted to be in because I find that you feel sort of like the rabbit yourself there; never relaxing the same way you would in 3rd or 4th and worrying a bit too much about the splits instead of just running. No one else was going to tuck in though, so if I hadn't done it, there would have been a huge gap between him and the pack and there was no reason to waste the opportunity to run fast. The other downfall was that when Harris stepped off the track, I was the rabbit for the next 300m or so. You won't find me doing that again.

As for the result, 3:43.30, I wasn't too pleased. Breaking 3:40 was a little optimistic, but a 3:40-41 would have been a lot more satisfying. As it is, I think it's the fastest 1500m opener I've ever had, but I'm not taking much solace in that. I need to be running faster. No excuses.

Next up will be Mt. Sac and then the 1200m leg on Team Canada at Penn Relays for the USA vs. The World DMR.

This morning, Ellerton, Justin and I had a nice run on the trails up in North Scottsdale. We ran with some wild horses, which was pretty cool, and Ellerton and Justin narrowly escaped an encounter with a Diamondback rattlesnake. A pretty good sized one too. Hearts were racing a little bit. Luckily, I happened to be a few feet farther over or I may have needed a change of underwear as well.

After the run, we sauntered over to The Good Egg for some sunshine and huevos rancheros on the patio before heading back for an afternoon of NHL 2012.

Not a bad Thursday.

Here's a video of the race: (due to the video skills of an unnamed source, you can't actually see my last 80m. Which might actually be a good thing, cause I don't think it was pretty.)

   
      - Linc